Shunryu Suzuki Roshi

by Shunryu Suzuki Roshi

SHUNRYU SUZUKI ROSHI was a Japanese Zen priest who belonged to the Soto lineage. Roshi arrived in San Francisco in 1959 at the age of fifty-four. Already a respected Zen master in Japan, he was impressed by the seriousness and quality of “beginner’s mind” among Americans he met who were interested in Zen and decided to settle there.

As more and more people of non-Japanese background joined him in meditation, the San Francisco Zen Center came into being and he was its first abbot. Under his tutelage, the Zen Center grew into City Center, Green Gulch Farm and Tassajara Zen Mountain Center. Suzuki Roshi was undoubtedly one of the most influential Zen teachers of his time.

Some of his edited talks have been collected in the books Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind and Branching Streams Flow in the Darkness: Zen Talks on the Sandokai. Suzuki Roshi died in 1971.